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pigpotjr t1_jcrn6s4 wrote

Reply to comment by quantdave in Weekly History Questions Thread. by AutoModerator

Thank you! Just to make sure I understand it correctly. An academic historian would study the American Revolution in Boston, but an academic geographer would study how the location of Boston contributed to its role in the American Revolution? If this is the case, how is this different from Environmental History?

Also, do you have any recommendations for academic geography literature so as to get a better idea of the field's research? Thanks again; I am just confused about how both fields differ since they seem so similar.

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quantdave t1_jcrz7fz wrote

Yes, I think that's a helpful way to to think about it: either scholar might in theory undertake either study, one taking history as the starting-point, the other geography: the geographer might take a longer-run approach, studying how location, urban form, economic specialisation, regional linkages and social structure shaped Boston's political character, but that too could use the 1770s as its focus.

Environmental history's another growing field intimately related to both traditional disciplines and particularly with population/economic history and historical geography, and now enriched by increasing application of techniques like pollen ice-core & tree-ring analysis which may yet supplant earlier approaches in some contexts. I'd say that where history starts from human populations in or over time and historical geography from the physical context, environmental history's more explicitly about the interaction between the two: the same might be said of historical geography too, but there the focus tends to be more specifically on the impact on the human populations concerned.

My historical geography texts tend to be rather old and my economic geography ones older still and more narrowly-focused, contemporary rather than specifically historical treatments clustering mostly the first half of the 20th century (when we get the first modern studies), so I hesitate to recommend any. NJG Pounds' Historical geography of Europe and its successors are perhaps the best-known, but there's also a later Oxford multi-author work of the same title bringing together both geographers and historians that I must get my hands on. I don't know of anything similar for the US, for which I tend to use economic & demographic studies and the census record: perhaps the phenomenon of the shifting frontier has worked against more general treatments integrating both disciplines.

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pigpotjr t1_jd4klvr wrote

Thank you so much for your detailed response! If it is alright, I do have one last question.

It's wildly known that the Job market for both Academic and non-academic historians (amongst many other humanities) is unfortunately abysmal. Can the same be said for academic Geography? In other words, which field, the history of Geography, has the better academic job outlook?

Thanks again; I really appreciate it!

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quantdave t1_jd5kvut wrote

I'm sadly the last person to ask about careers! My guess though is that if you're undecided geography might offer better prospects as being more visibly relevant to international relations and business (history is of course also valuable for both, but I'm not sure it's widely perceived as such) - and of course an environmental component would be useful in our times. An environmental, economic & human geography mix incorporating change through time might be a way to go while you weigh up specialisation options.

You might be better off taking that query up with a geography subreddit or board (or some academics if you can get your hands on them), unless there are any hereabouts with experience of both fields. The whole world of work is a formidable challenge, and who knows where it's headed? In your favour at least the baby-boom intake is retiring from the scene and AI isn't yet smart enough to replace them. Good luck in whatever you choose.

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